From Zero to Mozart
Stage 5The bowLesson 29 of 38 · Reading

Bowing a passage yourself

Sometimes the part gives you a full bowing. Often it gives you almost nothing — just notes, slurs and dynamics — and you decide the rest: directions, where in the bow, retakes. This lesson is the method for doing that, and it ends where the course has been pointing all along.

The checklist

  1. Find the strong beats. They want down-bows (the-rule-of-the-down-bow).
  2. Count the notes between the strong beats. Work out which direction each group has to start so the strong beat lands ⊓.
  3. Fix the clashes. Where the count would put a strong beat on an up-bow, use a retake, a hooked bowing, or choose a slur that re-groups the notes.
  4. Plan the distribution (planning-the-bow). Will you run out of bow? Where does each phrase start — frog, middle? Where do you retake to reset before the next one?
  5. Mark it in, play it slow, adjust.

A worked example

72 bpm

How to play it

Down-bow the half-note G (use a third of the bow), up A, down B — you're near the middle now. Retake back toward the frog. Bar 2 the same. Bar 3, a full slow down-bow to the tip on the final G.

A plain phrase, no bowing given. The plan: each bar starts on the strong beat, so each bar starts down-bow. Bar 1 is 'down (half) – up – down'; that ends bar 1 on a down-bow, so retake across the barline to start bar 2 down as well. Bar 2 mirrors it. Bar 3 is one long down-bow home.

Notice every choice served a reason: strong beats down, don't run out of bow, retake in the gap where the phrase breathes.

Where this has been going — the first phrase of Mozart

The Stage 4 lesson the-first-note-of-mozart decoded what the K.216 solo opening is: a rolled G-major chord landing on a high G, then the leading tone F♯ leaning back to G. Now you can decode how it's bowed.

76 bpm

How to play it

Down-bow from the frog. Roll G-string up to the E string quickly, arrive on the high G with half the bow spare, sustain it. The dip to F♯ and back is small and light. Up-bow the held G in bar 2, easing.

The simplified K.216 entrance, with a bowing. Decode it: the chord is the strong first beat of the solo, so it's a DOWN-bow — a fast roll bottom-to-top (rolling-a-chord-with-the-bow), landing on the high G with plenty of bow left to sing it. The little F♯–G turn stays in that same down-bow or takes a small up-bow; either way it's light. Then the held G (bar 2) is the up-bow answer.

That's the whole arc: Stage 4 taught you to read the first note of Mozart; Stage 5 taught you to bow it. "I can't even play the first note" is no longer true.

Try it

Try

Take a Stage 1 or Stage 2 tune with no bowing marked. Run the checklist: strong beats, note-counts, fixes, distribution. Write ⊓ and V in with a pencil. Play it. Then try a different valid bowing for the same tune and hear how it changes the phrasing — there's usually more than one good answer.

The usual mistake

Bowing a passage note-by-note as you sight-read it, so you're constantly running out of bow or landing strong beats on weak up-bows and having to scramble. Plan the phrase as a whole, backwards from its end, before you play. The other mistake: assuming there's one "correct" bowing — often several work, and the choice is a musical one.